Atlas Shrugged Part Two (2012) or "Fear and Loathing in Galtsylvania"

Let the record show that I had to pay $10.50 at the Woburn Ma multiplex to finally hear Raymond Joseph Teller (of "Penn & Teller" fame) actually say something in a motion picture. Too bad that motion picture is "Atlas Shrugged Part II" a cheaply made, crudely acted mishaugas that doggedly cashes in on the classic objectivist novel and it's cult appeal. Teller must have wanted to speak up in defense of his well know libertarian principles in the worst possible way....and so he did. There is just something grimly ironic about a group of artistic nonentities creating a two hour long piece of utter hackwork whose core mission it is to denounce and deplore the mediocrities that persecute the producing class. *** It is important to locate Ayn Rand within a larger continuum of 20th century political thougt, that is the ongoing quest for a rigorous Counter-Marxist system of thought. For a while there, Counter Marxism was Big Medicine within and without political science with a diverse range of players everyone from Dr. Fred C. Schwarz to Billy Graham, William F. Buckley, William Simon (that founder of numberless conservative think tanks in Washington DC) along with heavy hitting intellectuals like Eric Voegelin and Friedrich Hayek and numerous others along for the ride. There were some serious charlatans mixed in there as well, Counter-Marxism could be a lucrative intellectual discipline if you played your cards right. And right there at the center of the maelstrom was Russian refugee, novelist, screenwriter & philopher Ayn Rand who saw no validity to anyone else's system of thought but her own, even her fellow Counter-Marxists. It is ironic to note that in some ways, Rand was a better Bolshevik than she herself realized, utterly humorless, zealous to the point of fanatism and a militant atheistic to her dying day....and indeed its her Godlessness that put her at lifelong odds with the more conventionally spiritual US Anti-communists, the William F. Buckleys and Billy Grahams. No, Rand believed in elites, good old fashioned Pre-Marxist Nietzchean elites, success was the indispensible indicator of superiority, as long as wealth favored cunning then the elites were secure and the masses can go hang. This is a ideology of particular appeal to US Sophomores, everyone wants to belong to an elite, especially in college, unself conscious mediocrities on the other hand always crave a caste of helots and thralls to patronize and deplore. It was all so simple simple enough to ensnare two generations of college sophomores. What unites Rand with Buckley and Schwarz and all the rest is the unstated notion that the confrontation with Marxism-Leninism is somehow a crisis of faith, and that what gives communism its power over the masses is the fervor and density of the belief system. The response therefore is simple anti-communists must generate and then simultaneously proclaim a powerful Counter-Marxist Creed and transform the whole confrontation into a cosmic war for intellectual, spirit and physical supremacy. There is something ironic about so famous an atheist as Ayn Rand birthing an entire system of theology for others to moon over and worship, but then again there was always a dead void where Counter Marxism's sense of humor should have been. To which I stand athwart the whole process and cry HALT!! A clash of faiths, especially synthetic ones derived from political philosophy is a conflict uniquely freighted with fantasy distortion and cognitive dissonance. Moreover you read history, economics, sociology and mere factuality right out of the argument. Faith is easy, the facts are always hard to find and tougher to proclaim. *** Ah but the movie is was awful, the SyFy does it better with it's Saturday Afternoons devoted to "Mega Octo-Squid versus the Atomic TornadoQuake" they certainly take the time to collect and rehearse better actors. I think SyFy stalwart Debbie Gibson would definitely make a better Dagny Taggart than Samantha Mathis...Gibson would pout less and wouldn't perhaps bark her orders with so much uncertainty. Ah but these are true believers we are talking about, all they need is a threadbare $20 million dollar production to sell to the true believers for the next generation or more. Certainly a mere two years ago word on the street was the two planned sequels to "Atlas Shrugged" were cancelled on grounds of poor box office, clearly DVD sales made up for this or a new collection of suckers were dug up to back the franchise. It is also notable that nearly the entire franchise was recaast from part one to part two with no appreciable improvement in the delivery of Rand's leaden self satisfied dialogue. And indeed we must recall when we see films as bad as "Atlas Shrugged Part II" that to the end of his life Ed Wood Jr. insisted that "Plan Nine from Outer Space" was a very serious anti-nuclear movie.

Channel Zero Returns This Friday Night!

With a screening of "Journey Into Fear" (1942) (Allegedly) Directed by Norman Foster Joseph Cotten stars in this classic WW II spy movie as a befuddled American engineer who must flee wartime Turkey with Nazi Assassin's in pursuit! Starring Joseph Cotten, Ruth Warwick, Jack Moss, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Agnes Moorhead & Delores Del Rio. See this movie & recall one of the great mysteries of Hollywood's Golden Age, "Did Orson Welles Really Direct Journey into Fear"? This Friday October 12th 8pm The Somerville Theatre (micro cinema) 55 Davis Square Somerville MA Admission $5 (CHEAP!) 617 625 5700 Good Luck Finding Us on Facebook!! *** Y'know,let the record show that every time, Orson Welles tried to reintroduce himself to Hollywood it was usually with some sort of a thriller movie. This is sort of ironic given his reputation as an iconic auteur of heavy dramas. Stop and think though, "The Stranger"(1946) was spy drama designed to repair Welles' reputation for profligacy and "Artiness" after the whole It's All True/Magnificent Ambersons mishaugas. "The Lady from Shanghai"? A doomed bid to land himself a production deal at Columbia using the unique leverage of Welles own wife Rita Hayworth over Studio Boss Harry Cohn. The result was a quirky noir that is one of Rita Hayworth's best films...even if she plays a thoroughly disreputable character. In 1958 Welles made yet another attempt to re-enter the Hollywood ranks with the very last of the noir thrillers "Touch of Evil". Hell the very first property the Mercury Theater optioned was a spy story called "The Smiler with a Knife". Taken all together one gets the distinct impression that Welles was constantly trying to create a default position for himself in Hollywood as a sort of domestic brand of Alfred Hitchcock. Who was perhaps the Wellesian ideal, a superb artist with a robust record of success at the box office. As for "Journey into Fear" the script is a bit of a mess (little of the source novel's risque atmosphere makes it into the screenplay) but the whole thing is enlivened by an excellent Mercury Theater cast and a sock-o ending worthy of Hitchcock at his best. Supposedly Norman Foster directed the film, but we here at Channel Zero have our doubts...maybe Orson Welles did direct this film after all- It sure looks like an Orson Welles movie if shot on the fly a bit...

Come and see for yourself!

Late word comes to us

that WMFP-TV Channel 62 in Lawrence Ma has changed hands from the eminently watchable "ME-TV" with the re-runs of "The Rifleman:,"Lost in Space" and "Batman" to something called "Plum-TV" defined as "Lifestyle Television" ergo infomercials, 24-7. Appalling! WMFP-TV was quite literally the last place on basic cable where one could see Van Williams and Bruce Lee in "The Green Hornet"on the small screen the Way Ghod Intended! Oh well I guess it is back to watching Texas'unfolding "Feral Pig Crisis" on A&E. More and more I suspect that if we do not want to live in a television world dominated by the thrilling antics of pawn shop clerks, we may have to make a Last Stand on Local Cable Access.

Marie Antoinette at the A.R.T.

Y'know I liked this play, but I did not love it. But that is a huge concession from me given the A.R.T.'s record of artistic bungling nigh these past five years or so. Oh it is a flashy witty production to be sure, anchored by a bravura performance from Brooke Bloom as the doomed Queen of France she goes easily from a sort of Lucille Ball clown to a trembling haughty Hepburn facing that final blade. Ms. Bloom seems bound for bigger places based on this performance. If I have a complaint its that the scenario is nigh hilarious in the first act and then as the Royal Family faces deposition and execution it darkens and darkens to pitch black. But then again that tracks pretty much with the broad flow of French History before and during the revolution, first farce then the massacre. Kudos to dramatist David Adjmi for catching that aspect of the story. As for the A.R.T.I'm gonna go out on a limb and suggest their current fascination with all things transgressive, flashy and contemporary strongly suggests they ought to abandon all classical revivals and confine themselves to new plays a'la The Gate Theatre in Dublin. There is nothing worse than watching the A.R.T. work a disco glitter ball into something like Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. They are doing "Pippin" in december, that seems like a good start.

Pick of the Week...

is undoubtedly Carmine Gallone's 1926 silent Italian epic "The Last Days of Pompeii" screening at 4pm Sunday September 23rd at the Harvard Film Archive (for free no less!).

Carmine Gallone was a reliable hack who directed any number of forgettable fare under the aegis of Benito Mussolini back when the Blackshirts ruled the roost. His high point was directing "Scipio Africanus" (1937) a bloated lumbering epic given to celebrating the joys of Roman colonization in North Africa. After the war his career staggered on directing costume epics until the early 1960's....the man was nothing if not consistent. Well, we should know, Channel Zero first screened "Scipio Africanus" over ten years ago at the Coolidge Corner Theater. I just wanna say that this appears to be the third time in a year that the HFA has screened films dating from the Italian Fascist era, a film making epoch which, up until now, has been pretty much been the province of Channel Zero. Oh well, this is the HFA we are talkin' about they at least understand the worth of the film. But I reiterate, anyone out there who can get me a line on North Korean propaganda films....drop me a little note. Either that or wartime Japanese fare...I'm starting to get desperate...

Channel Zero Returns Next Month!!

With a screening of "Journey Into Fear" (1942)

(Allegedly) Directed by Norman Foster

Joseph Cotten stars in this classic WW II spy movie as a befuddled American engineer who must flee wartime Turkey with Nazi Assassin's in pursuit!
Starring Joseph Cotten, Ruth Warwick, Jack Moss, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Agnes Moorhead & Delores Del Rio.
See this movie & recall one of the great mysteries of Hollywood's Golden Age,

"Did Orson Welles Really Direct Journey into Fear"?

Friday October 12th 8pm
The Somerville Theatre (micro cinema)
55 Davis Square
Somerville MA
Admission $5 (CHEAP!)
617 625 5700
Good Luck Finding Us on Facebook!!
Channel Zero, now in our sixteenth year of genteel video transcendence…

Late word comes out of Somerville

of the unexpected death of Courtney Wayshak last week.
Long ago, in the life before The Internet made grubby pamphleteers of us all, Courtney was our editor and friend at the now defunct Boston Comic News. He was charming, full of anecdote and encouragement for the writers and artists in his charge....Courtney made an unpaid writing gig at an obscure publication into an adventure, a duel with giants, a ribald comedy and an epic of youth.

He will be missed, Peace to His Ashes, Succor to his Loved Ones.

Meanwhile back in the Granite State

Photographer Evelyn Lamprey has her first gallery show ever at The Studio in Laconia New Hampshire.

Yeah I KNOW it is a schlep but this is a new artist in the making, yuh wanna get in on the ground floor of something good doncha?

***
Ah Laconia, had a lot of fun there back when I was a wee summer camp counselor...Did a lot of good laundry, got spurned righteously by the local girls....

The Final trumpet Sounds on the Red Line....

This evening on the Red Line a gorgeous young blonde haired woman sat down opposite to me wearing a pair of unlaced boots and a diaphanous white sun dress. No purse, no book bag, no IPod, I could not figure out how she paid her fare. She was utterly unencumbered.
She had a placid untroubled countenance, imagine a benign version of Paris Hilton. By the time we reached Downtown Crossing I noticed she was cradling a tiny brown kitten in her lap...and by the time we reached Park Street I was convinced she was the very Angel of Death come to ring down my final reckoning.
Truly the only other thing she had on her ghostly person was a tiny pair of safety scissors, a very surreal scene to be sure.

She had to be an angel, she sure as shit wasn't leaping over the turnstyle in that teensy little dress. She got off at Alewife, my very stop just to make it all very very Gothic indeed...I searched the platform the shades of my Honorable Ancestors were nowhere to be seen.
The Angel meanwhile disappeared up the stair still petting her tiny little kitten....no doubt to return from the Divine Altitudes from whence she came.

Batman: The Dark Knight Rises (2012) or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Batusi...

"Some Days, You Just Can't Get Rid Of A Bomb!"

Such was the dilemma for Adam West in 1966 and such was the climax of "The Dark Knight Rises" in 2012, Bruce Wayne escapes a glacially slow moving "inescapable death trap" in Anarchystan only to spent the last ten minutes of the film careening around Gotham CIty trying to defuse a "Four Megaton Nuclear Device" with an inane five month fuse.

Spoiler Alert (Weapons Research & Development Division), You can't fly a four megaton H-Bomb out to sea via Bat Helicopter and hope to spare Gotham City, blast fire radiological effects and very likely a "nuclear tsunami"as well.

My point is, that director Christopher Nolan wanted to end his Bat-Trilogy on a Wagnerian note in the worst possible way, and he succeeded beyond Warner Brother's wildest dreams. What they got was a huge box office, what we got was a hopeless game of connect the dots, from yawning plot hole to plot hole.
I mean Bane can punch holes in marble columns, but Batman smacks the bad guy in the fetish-mask a few times and the Gramsci quoting lout virtually falls to his knees in a swoon.
And DON"T get me started about Talia, the dumbest passive aggressive bimbo on Batman's A-List of super villainy, seriously her big plan to steal the Wayne Family's personal nuke and vaporize Gotham CIty???
Whaddya callit..."Operation Thunderball"??!!
The Caped Crusader has a few too many unoriginal lackwits in his very crowded rogue's gallery, he can afford a cut a few out without damaging his bottom line...
***
For all that the movie was was magnificently acted, Christian Bale is officially in Chris Reeves orbit in terms of character identification, he let nothing slip thru out the entire cycle, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Tom Hardy....superlative work down the line redeeming a hash of a script.
Oh and Ann Hathaway as Catwoman, freaking amazing...I initially disparaged the choice when I heard it, I'd like to take a moment to publicly apologize, like Bale, she let nothing slip past her for two hours and forty five minutes, her intensity and focus helped save a film with an out of control script.
No doubt even as I write this she is being bombarded with ideas for a solo Catwoman film "RESIST ANN RESIST!" I cry "Remember Halle Berry!"

In short great cast, hopeless script mired in excess....Nolan has done better work elsewhere.

Pick of the Week!

Is undoubtedly The Harvard Film Archive's revival of "The Island of Lost Souls" (1934) starring Charles Laughton as Dr. Moreau, HG Wells' infamous maker of animal-human hybrids.
For years this bad baby did no circulate on the revival circuit as Paramount was uneasy with the unsubtle hints of rape, bestiality and homosexuality....1934 was clearly a tad too early to explore John Waters' territory! I must have requested it a dozen times for the olde Orson Welles Sci Fi Marathon..Well here it is at last screening on Quincy Street in the teeming heart of Harvard Square and it even includes a stellar cameo appearance by Bela Lugosi as the beastmen's nominal lawgiver.
The balloon goes up at 9:30pm Sharp be there, this is a once in a lifetime big screen screening....

HRH Elizabeth Regina, of England Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland....

Now reduced to co-starring with Daniel Craig like she was Keira Knightley or some damn thing.

Proposed Caption; "The Things That I Do For England, God Almighty but I Miss the Luftwaffe!!"

Pick of the Week!

The HFA is screening Marlon Brando's only directorial effort "The One Eyed Jacks" (1961) tonight at 7pm.

Go figure, it's a western from a famously pro-American Indian activist...

Well whatever, it has to worth seeing, if only because it hales from an era when Brando still took his craft seriously and had artist goals (however vague and unobtainable they may have been).
I could write about the man all day long, his excesses and mistakes were only matched every step of the way by his supreme ability.

Pick of the Week!

This Friday, July 20th, celebrate the sixty eighth anniversary of "Operation Valkyrie Day" with a rare screening of Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis in "Artists and Models" at the Harvard Film Archive.
9pm, sharp...and yes Shirley MacLaine does get all tarted up as Dean & Jerry's own comic book creation "Bat Lady".
I mean, take THAT Caped Crusader!

Pick of the Week

Run don't walk to the Harvard Film Archive for tonight's 7pm screening of "Wedding March" (1928) directed by and starring da king of da Teutons, Erich von Stroheim and featuring Fay Wray with the ever suffering much put upon,Zasu Pitts.
This film does not normally circulate either in repertory screenings or on DVD owing to the extreme rarity of the film, the HFA had to secure a print from the Library of Congress no less, making tonight's screening an authentic rarity.
Its a silent movie, but that doesn't mean you can talk or check your phone messages or anything...

Robert Blake may be

guilty of murder, but the fact that he called the repellent and corrupt Piers Morgan "Charlie Potatoes" to the CNN's host's hateful little face, is just too precious and lovely for words.

Happy Belated Birthday

Richard Starkey, late of The Dingle in Liverpool and better know to the universe as Ringo Starr.

Y'know I've finally decided that Ringo wasn't the most talented or creative member of The Beatles, but he did have was charisma, loads of it.
Consider that he replaced Pete Best after what amounted to coup within the band itself thus making the drummer's sinecure inherently perilous as far as The Beatles were concerned.
And EMI was pushing back on the band with respect to Ringo's musicality...and the fan reaction in England to his inclusion was awful to say the least.
But Ghod love him, Starr turned it all around, wove a spell over the audience, got his band mates behind him and somehow convinced EMI that he was a valued member of the team.
And it was charisma that carried him through it all, when Peter Best clearly demonstrated his hold on The Beatle's fanbase, John, Paul and George did naught but ceaselessly plot his downfall.
When Ringo demonstrated and even greater appeal, John Paul & George shrugged and repaired to the green room to write songs for Ringo to sing.

Like I said, charisma....

Question for the Day....

How badly does Bill Murray want to win an Academy Award?

Consider the record..."The Razor's Edge" (1984), Murray 2003 Best Actor nomination for "Lost in Translation" and his ongoing association with Wes Anderson (a director who could well end up winning Best Picture by accident one of these days).
Now comes word of a historic impersonation, FDR no less in the yet to be released "Hyde Park on the Hudson".
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences just luvs historic impersonations...just sayin'.
The question is, why does Bill Murray want to win an Oscar?
He might be the least ego driven actor in Hollywood (which ain't sayin' much I know)...Lots of actors want the Oscar for reasons of unquiet neuroses (Jim Carrey) or else sheer vanity (Robin Williams) but Bill Murray's motivation (if I'm guessing right here) remains utterly inscrutable.
Or else maybe Bill just thinks its a hoot for an actor with no management and no staff and no production company who makes all his commitments in person or over the phone...to win an Oscar.
A subtle way to flip off tinseltown if'n ya think about it.

Well whatever, the acceptance speech will be one for the ages...if I'm guessing right.

Feel free to discuss....

Moonrise KIngdom (2012) Directed by Wes Anderson

THIS is a film for everyone out there who has longed to see Harvey "The Bad Lieutenant" Keitel play a uniformed Boy Scout Leader beneath a flowing walrus moustache.
Otherwise this is the best movie I've seen this summer and illustrates perfectly the notion that everything I know about the opposite sex I learned in the Boy Scouts of America.
I know, the thought chills the blood....

Games I like to play:

"Fakes", generating spurious and entirely non-existent film titles and casts with the stipulation that the cast itself must be reasonably accurate to the era. So the "year" tends to be the important variable along with the captione genre:
Examples:
"The Loves of Rasputin" (1940) starring Bela Lugosi, Maria Montez, Grady Sutton, Jon Hall, Sabu & Shemp Howard

"Fascist Beach Partei" (1964) starring Deborah Whalley, Tommy Kirk, Yvonne Craig, Bobby Watson, Joe Devlin, Harvey Lembeck, with music from Peter & Gordon, The Supremes and Gary Lewis and the Playboys.

"Zorro and Calamity Jane Against the World" (1964) starring Gordon Scott and Joi Lansing

"I Orbited The Moon with an All Girl Crew" (1968) starring Dean Martin, Mary Ann Mobley, Yvonne Craig, Stella Stevens and Wally Cox"

"Django Against Sputnik" (1966) starring Franco Nero, Lee Van Clief and Chelo Alonso

But whether my intent is parody or simply close mimicry, I could never come up with a title as patently ridiculous or a film as inane as "Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter".
As Harrison Ford once told George Lucas on a sound stage far far away "George you can write this shit, but you sure as hell can't say it!"